In this paper, I offer an explication of the notion of local explanation. In the literature, local explanations are considered as metaphysically and methodologically satisfactory: local explanations reveal the contingency of science and provide a methodologically sound historiography of science. However, the lack of explication of the notion of local explanation makes these claims difficult to assess. The explication provided in this paper connects the degree of locality of an explanans to the degree of contingency of the explanandum. Moreover, the (...) explication is shown to be compatible with the methodological need for a general consideration in the historiography of science. In this way, the explication satisfies the need to explicate an important notion, connects local explanations and contingency, and enables us to see how local explanations and general considerations can be connected. However, the explication also sheds critical light on many claims and expectations that are associated with local explanations and their satisfactoriness. (shrink)

I argue in this article that an aspect of Imre Lakatos’s philosophy has been largely ignored in previous literature. The key feature of Lakatos’s philosophy of the historiography of science is its non-representationalism, which enables comparisons of alternative ‘historiographic research programmes’ without implying that the interpretations of history re-present or mirror the past. I discuss some problems of this interpretation and show specifically that Lakatos’s philosophy does not distort the history of science despite its normative ambitions. The last section is (...) devoted to updating Lakatos’s programme to answer the needs of contemporary history and philosophy of science. The standard of rationality used in comparative assessments should be understood as a tool for measuring the coherence of an account of history with regard to the ‘actual history’. This standard takes two forms: framework-dependent and framework-independent rationality. The latter is decisive in comparative assessments. (shrink)

This paper considers the legacy of Kuhn and his Structure with regard to the current history and philosophy of science. Kuhn can be seen as a myth breaker, whose contribution is the way he connected historical and philosophical studies of science, questioning the cumulativist image and demanding historical responsibility of the views of science. I build on Kuhn’s legacy and outline a suggestion for theoretical and philosophical study of history (of science), which can be subdivided into three categories. The first (...) is the philosophical analysis of historical interpretation and its relation to the historical record. The second is ‘theoretical history’ in which one tries to infer philosophically relevant interpretations on the nature of science on the basis of historical evidence. The third is the conceptual reflection of the assumptions and implications of the contemporary historiography of science. At the end I suggest that theoretical and philosophical study of history offers a fresh way to make history and philosophy relevant to each other. (shrink)

ArgumentThis article contributes to a global history of relativity, by exploring how Einstein’s theory was appropriated in Belgium. This may sound like a contradiction in terms, yet the early-twentieth-century Belgian context, because of its cultural diversity and reflectiveness of global conditions (the principal example being the First World War), proves well-suited to expose transnational flows and patterns in the global history of relativity. The attempts of Belgian physicist Théophile de Donder to contribute to relativity physics during the 1910s and 1920s (...) illustrate the role of the war in shaping the transnational networks through which relativity circulated. The local attitudes of conservative Belgian Catholic scientists and philosophers, who denied that relativity was philosophically significant, exemplify a global pattern: while critics of relativity feared to become marginalized by the scientific, political, and cultural revolutions that Einstein and his theory were taken to represent, supporters sympathized with these revolutions. (shrink)